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Donald Trump

“Today I voted in what I believe is the most important election in my lifetime.”

Still believe it. More than ever.

I’m about to take a social media hiatus right now for sanity’s sake, despite feeling tremendous gratitude to all my friends there – both the ones I know in real life, and those who live oceans away. It’s just too much for my senses right now. I need some quiet to think, reflect, and weep.

It’s funny, I never thought I’d love and treasure Facebook the way I do. There is so much freaking love and solidarity and compassion in my feed it’s unreal. Maybe in part because I came to the FB party super late, and most of the people are actual friends, or people I’d like to be friends with, and almost all of them share my views about things like, for example, politics and feminism. It sure makes easy reading, let me tell you.

My friends on FB got me through this election. They got me through those train wreck debates and all the ugliness that came before and after. I was on FB during the 3rd debate and I can’t tell you how much it helped. My husband and I were in the room together of course, but I also felt like I had dozens of friends whispering in my ear and passing me notes.

We’re in this together, you all said to me via funny jokes and serious commentary.

I felt so understood and cared for and seen. Just like I did last night and this morning.

Thank you.

Stepping away is not about that, but about taking care of myself during this grief.

Because I am totally grieving right now.

It started last night, around 11pm, when I shut down the internet and tried to fall asleep. I felt like someone had scraped all my insides out. My heart and chest felt hollow, empty.

The feeling was familiar because it’s exactly how I felt the morning after my mom died. When I shared this with my husband he agreed, saying that his emptiness feels similar to the global grief he felt after 9/11. The world is different. Or actually it isn’t. The world is the same, we’re just seeing it differently.

Regardless. My heart is broken. Having to tell my daughter this morning broke it all over again. Her hopeful face crumbled. I watched it crumble and then she cried. I had spent the previous hour practicing what I would say to her after reading an article online, but before I could open my mouth I started crying again.

I hugged her tightly. I said, “I know, me too.”

My daughter made this the other day.

We talked after our tears slowed, and we’ll talk more tonight. Really, our conversation is just beginning. My husband woke up soon after and found out the news from our faces. He was just as crushed.

All day I’ve been cycling through sadness, disbelief, and anger. I’m also crying, a lot. In the car I screamed so loudly my whole body went rigid. My heart keeps on breaking.

I told my husband that we cry now, and then we fight. I believe this. I’m not down for the count. But I am down. I don’t want to hear a thing about giving Trump a chance right now. I’m also not ready to put on my gloves and get into the ring, yet.

So, for now, I’m just going to grieve.

Sending love to everyone else in the trenches, or wherever you find yourself in the aftermath of this election.

P.S. Thank you to whoever took down the Trump signs near the intersection by my house. I literally was ready to pull over and rip them out myself (I just can’t bear to see them so close to home) but you beat me to it.

Today I voted in what I believe is the most important election of my lifetime.

I voted with butterflies in my stomach, but instead of the thick suffocating fear that has been weighing me down these past few months, I felt a lightness. I felt hopeful.

My husband and I waited in a long, but quickly moving line after dropping off the kids at school. Despite all my reading material, I didn’t crack open one book. We ended up standing behind some new friends from our daughter’s school. While chatting with them, a poll worker came over to write down our names. The friend spelled out his last name and then said something like, my wife’s is the same.

The older woman with the pen and paper asked, “Should I put wife as your name?” The husband looked aghast. “Oh, no, that would not go over well.” My husband agreed, saying, “Especially in this election,” and I quickly added, “Or any election.” We all laughed a little. I’m still unsure if the woman was being sincere or not. It’s hard to tell these days.

Some of my friends and family are probably (and others definitely) voting for Trump. We currently live in rural Pennsylvania, on the eastern border of the state, close to Philadelphia, but still. This is not the liberal Brooklyn where I lived for 13 years.

Maybe that’s why I’ve been wearing my feminist gold tank top as often as possible, including to the polls today.

I wore a cardigan sweater over it, because it was chilly this morning, but I deliberately left it open. I’m proud of who I am, who I’ve been since I was old enough to know the definition of the word, feminist. It has always baffled me when smart, strong, intelligent women deny this part of their identities. How can they, when the definition of equality is so simple and clear?

ES: I suppose the simplest definition would be believing that women are entitled to the same rights, opportunities and protections under the law as men. Equal pay for equal work, complete sovereignty over their bodies …

MLP: As opposed to being a sociopath? You can’t argue with those points.

ES: But people do. In this day and age, calling yourself feminist, whether you are a man or woman, has become a political statement.

Yes. Yes, it has. That’s why I wore my shirt today, and yesterday, and all the days earlier. After chatting with the woman in front of me, whose political affiliation I wasn’t sure of, I decided to take a chance and flash her my shirt. Her eyes lit up. I love it, she said.

Like Hillary, who is (hopefully) about to step into what was formerly a man’s domain. The Presidency of the United States. For years I felt a kind of ambivalence toward Hillary, no doubt in part because of the media’s negative spin and certain family members’ less than stellar opinions, but during this election cycle my ambivalence has transformed into deep admiration.

Her eloquence, strength, and poise in the face of misogyny and abject hatred is awe-inspiring. I honestly don’t know how any woman could watch that second town hall debate and not feel sickened or at least uneasy at the way Trump stalked her on that stage. He tried to intimidate her, shake her up, as men do when they hover and physically insert themselves into a woman’s personal space, but Hillary DID NOT FLINCH.

After I told my daughter a highly edited version about that night’s debate, she wondered if maybe Hillary didn’t see him. “Oh, she saw him alright,” I told her. “She knew he was there, but she didn’t let that stop her. She is tremendously strong,” I said, “and brave.”

And now, after weeks of mudslinging and false accusations, after what is already being called one of the ugliest and cutthroat of presidential races (from both sides), here we are. Election day. This is it. The end of the line.

At first the confidence of her title concerned me. I’ve remained on high alert throughout these past weeks, tempering my excitement with caution. The idea of assuming victory and then being wrong, was too devastating. I chose to remain pessimistically optimistic, if that makes any sense. Until I read her post. It wasn’t about confidence or assumption at all. It was about faith. A word I have a tricky history with, but have been coming around to in recent years.

Faith. A belief in goodness, a belief that no matter the outcome, everything will be alright.

The other day I told my husband that we have to prepare our daughter, who suffers from paralyzing anxiety, that Hillary may not win. We’ve been careful to edit and shield her from the ugliest moments of this campaign, but she knows enough to sense our concern and misgivings. She knows enough to feel afraid.

“We have to tell her everything will be okay no matter what.”

“You mean, lie to her?” my husband said.

“Yeah, kind of.” Because at the time I didn’t believe my words.

Honestly, I’m still not sure I do, but I’m going to have faith that everything will be okay.

My father said these words to me on Sunday, after I expressed disbelief that the next time we saw each other we’d have a new president. This is my father, who I love dearly, who I assumed would be voting for Trump since despite being a registered Democrat (from his younger days) usually votes Republican.

When my daughter asked him who he was voting for, I cringed, but then he shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said, looking genuinely confused. “Maybe I’ll vote for myself.”

I laughed, with amusement and relief.

Then later when we hugged goodbye, he said these words to me: Everything is going to be okay, which I know he meant not only about the election, but life in general.

So, I decided to go for it. I’m choosing faith and love over fear and anger.

Either way, the fight for equality, freedom, love, and compassion is far from over. In some ways, it’s just beginning.

I’m most concerned now about what might happen after the election. I’m worried about possible violence, civil unrest, hate crimes, retaliation. Whoever is the next president has a shit ton of work to do when it comes to knitting back together the currently divided and divisive country.

And yet, as a wise relative recently said, there is a reason we are called the United States of America. I just hope we can live up to our name and find our way back to one another peacefully.

First, I’d like to thank everyone who read my last post about assault, left a comment, or sent me a note. I appreciate every act of kindness, compassion, and support.

It was scary to push “publish” in a way it never has been before, but once I did I felt a rush of relief. The second I let go of that post, I knew I did the right thing, no matter the response. Sometimes you don’t realize the weight you’re carrying until you release it.

I’ve read many stories about women being triggered by America’s presidential election. Some were on personal blogs, others in major news outlets. A few were written by my friends. Several people reached out to me and said, me too.

Reading about friends’ and strangers’ accounts of assault was both comforting and horrifying. But I believe there is power in our stories being out in the world. In sharing them. In breaking the silence.

It’s my deepest hope that if one good thing comes out of this election (and by that I mean, in addition to having a woman president) it is that the conversation about sexual assault, discrimination, and misogyny is at the forefront of the national (and international) conversation.

Thanks to Donald Trump, the term, “locker room talk,” will never be the same. Let’s hope we can also retire the adage, “boys will be boys.” Both expressions give a pass on reprehensible behavior. The kind I don’t want my son to be a part of, nor his sister to be a recipient of.

I decided that I wanted to compile all the articles I’ve been reading about sexual assault and the triggering of this election season. You’ll notice, the posts are not only from Americans, but from women abroad. This election is global in importance. If you don’t believe me, check out J.K. Rowling’s Twitter account.

What is the point of creating a list like this? My first hope is that it may help women feel less alone and isolated in their experience with assault, and also acknowledge that so many of us (men included) have been feeling a lingering disgust and unease by the news emerging about Trump’s past.

Bonus points if this list sways anyone on the fence during this perilous election season.

Finally, if you know of an article or post about this topic that I missed, please leave a comment and I’ll continue to update it.

Here’s the thing about assault. It doesn’t go away. You feel it, years later. You feel it when you think about what happened to you. Close to the anniversary of the occasion. Or when you visit the place where it happened. When you have nightmares. When you tell your story. Stories.

You think about it when you hear the leaked tape of a presidential candidate casually boasting about assaulting women. About grabbing them by their genitals. About kissing them without asking. You think about it when he dismisses it as “locker room talk,” when many citizens of your country agree with him, even some women.

If you can’t handle the way men talk about women then you need to grow up, says some washed up TV actor, a former heartthrob turned misogynist.

Thankfully there are men in your life who call bullshit on this behavior. Who are pissed off to be included in a gender that normalizes this kind of conversation, that helps perpetuate our rape culture. Who remind you with their love and kindness that not all men talk like this, not all men think like this. That this is NOT OK. Thankfully there are also men not in your life who feel the same way. Professional athletes who say, this isn’t how I talk about women. Actors and writers and even some Republicans say it too.

Here’s the thing about assault. When you think about it, write about it, you feel it in your body. No matter how much time has passed. No matter what kind of assault you endured. You feel the adrenaline racing. You feel your heart rate rising. You return to your animal self, running through the woods, across a savanna, down a city block, hoping to outrun the predator who is chasing you. Maybe the predator never touches you. Maybe he just makes you run. Scares you because he can. Maybe he pushes you out of a job, a home, a school, a family.

Every woman I know has an assault story. Some men, too. Most women have more than one. I have several, and yet I know I’m one of the lucky ones. I was never raped, though when I was twenty years old I was grabbed the way presidential candidate Donald Trump brags about grabbing women, the way several women have accused him of grabbing them.

I have more stories that I won’t detail here, but let me be clear when I say this:

Every single one of them has risen up in the past few weeks.

Ever since the news of that leaked tape, ever since I watched the first and second presidential debates, especially the second. All those old stories, those old scars, they are still there and they came to find me. In my waking moments, and in my dreams.

Assault does not disappear. It stays with you forever. And we are about to hold a presidential election in our country with a man on the ticket who brags about such things, who has been accused about such things, and who frankly, I believe has done such things.

I didn’t intend to write about this today. After the second debate I wrote several essays and blog posts in my head, and threw them all away. I felt unable to capture my disgust and fear and horror. I still feel unable, but here I am, after having read many other accounts over these past weeks, by brave women, and horrified men, so many of us triggered and enraged and sickened.